


U is for Unknowing

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason struggles to adjust to Cece's story and wonders if he should have somehow known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	U is for Unknowing

**Author's Note:**

> Implied incest

“So, Jason, what’s someone like Cece doing with you?” Ian had once asked, and Jason had to admit to himself that sometimes he wondered that exact same thing. Ever since that day when she had randomly turned up to picture day at a school she had never even attended, Jason had wondered why she had done that and then come over and started talking to him. All those times when he’d tried to initiate physical contact and Cece had pulled away, and Jason had never understood why – he’d wondered back then if Cece really wanted to be with him, but she’d always said that she did, and he’d put up with it just so he could hold on to her.There were times when Cece was round at the house and she seemed more interested in spending time with his annoying kid sister than with him, and Jason hadn’t understood that either. He understood trying to be polite, but Cece had seemed to seek Ali out, sometimes even more than she did Jason, and he’d always wondered why.

Of course, a lot of things made sense now he knew. Take the day she’d run off upset at Eric Kahn’s birthday party which had made no sense to Jason at the time. It was when Garrett had just started seeing Jenna Marshall, but had been secretive about who exactly he was seeing because he hadn’t wanted to admit that his new girlfriend was one of Eric’s kid brother Noel’s friends and still in high school. Eric had made some jokey remark about how maybe the girlfriend was imaginary and wasn’t Garrett a little old for that. “Yeah, really,” Jason had laughed. “I used to have this imaginary friend called Charlie when I was, like, seven?” As Eric, Ian, Melissa and Garrett had all laughed, Jason realised Cece was running away from them, looking upset. She’d laughed it off when he’d caught up with her, said it was nothing and she was just feeling sick after having drunk a little too much. Jason hadn’t questioned that at the time. But as he listened to Cece’s story, he thought about that incident in a whole new light. How must Cece (he still thought of her as that, he was so used to it, he couldn’t get used to thinking of her as Charlotte) have felt listening to herself being reduced to an imaginary friend?

And what must it have been like for her on that family trip to Cape May? Kenneth had fired a lot of questions at Cece the whole time, just the kind of things Jason would have expected him to ask his son’s new girlfriend. At one point, he’d asked Cece what her parents did, and Cece had seemed to freeze before saying that she didn’t have anything to do with them any more. “You never told me that before!” Jason had turned to her and exclaimed, but Cece had just said “I don’t like to talk about it.” Alison had then started talking about something else and that had been the end of the conversation, and Jason had never brought it up again, in fact he’d avoided all mention of her childhood. He remembered that Jessica had been quiet, especially in comparison to the way she usually questioned his girlfriends when she met them. How must that whole conversation have made Cece feel, to have her own father asking that question of her?

Part of Jason was wondering whether in some way he should have known. Another part knew that was crazy. Who the hell expected their new girlfriend to turn out to be their transgender brother who they had thought for years was their imaginary friend, after all? But at the same time, he kept wondering, should he not have recognised her on some level? All these stories about how people met their long lost siblings by chance after not having seen them for years and how they’d talk about how they felt some sort of connection, of recognition, should Jason not have felt that too? He knew he shouldn’t think that way. Alison hadn’t picked up on anything either, although in fairness that may have had something to do with the fact that she hadn’t known that their older sibling had existed. But Kenneth? Had he not recognised her on some level? Obviously not. And Jason knew he was going to keep asking himself that question for the rest of his life: should he have known? Was there anything he could have done differently to prevent it?

If he could, he would have laughed about the fact that out of all his family, he’d always thought that Alison was the liar. In this whole situation, turned out she was the only innocent party. Okay, maybe Kenneth wouldn’t have thought anything of it when Jason introduced him to “his new girlfriend Cece”. He genuinely believed that Charles was dead at the time. But his mother, she obviously knew as soon as Cece turned up for the trip to Cape May. If she had said something then, told the whole family the truth about who Cece was, how much of everything that had happened since could have been avoided? 

That time when Melissa had kissed him to piss Ian off, when Peter had yanked them both out of the car, he’d put a stop to it because they were half-siblings. Even if he hadn’t told the truth at the time about why he’d acted that way, at least he had tried to stop Jason and Melissa from making a big mistake. Jessica had allowed him to carry on seeing Cece, never telling him the truth. Okay, so he’d always known that Jessica didn’t approve of the relationship, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. Ian’s family always thought Melissa had a stick up her butt (they weren’t wrong there) and Garrett hadn’t even told his mother for a long time (Jason wasn’t sure if ever) that he was seeing Jenna, so Jessica’s disapproval of Cece hadn’t seemed like anything unusual.

She’d asked to see Jason after they’d taken her away, but Jason hadn’t been able to bring himself to go at the time, not until he’d worked it all out himself in his head. He knew Alison had seen her, and Alison had tried to talk to him about it, but he hadn’t wanted to know then either. Alison and Spencer, they were the only family members Jason was ready to have any contact with at the moment. Once Cece had told her story and it had become clear that she hadn’t killed their mother, but had found her dead instead, Kenneth had been charged with her murder (first time Rosewood Police got something right in years), and neither Alison nor Jason had wanted to visit him. If Kenneth had just accepted Cece as she was in the first place, had listened to her explanation of what had really happened with Alison in the bathtub, and had allowed Jason and Alison the chance to grow up with their other sibling as a part of their lives, none of this would have happened. Although he had to acknowledge that their mother was also not blameless, having not only allowed Kenneth to believe that Charles was dead, but to have made Cece stand beside that gravestone with her name on it. As for his supposed real father, Peter Hastings...well, nothing had changed there and Jason still didn’t want to know. Given Cece’s age and the fact that Peter had known the family at the time, he’d obviously known that Charles existed, so he must have had some part in the lie. Funny how all those years Jason had allowed himself to think that he was the family screwup. Well, looking at his family history, it was no wonder he had ended up in rehab, in fact he was probably the best adjusted out of the lot.

As he loaded the last of his belongings into the car, Jason took one last look at the town that had brought him nothing but misery. He needed some space to work out how he felt about everything before he could see his family again, and hopefully put it all behind him.


End file.
